Welcoming Never

Turning that final screw was like slicing a tiny piece out of my heart. Or perhaps the hole was always there and this was just making me realise it.

The bolt slid out of place and the bottom collapsed, the sides giving way after a bit of applied pressure, it fell to pieces carelessly and pedestrian, like dust upon the floor. Thus the cot, that had held all three of my children through their first few years; which had shared so many moments that we would be never to have again; whose time I always knew, but never really considered, would eventually come, was packed away for the very last time, as easily as packing groceries into the cupboard.

Just eight tiny bolts held it together. Eight bolts - that's it - doesn't seem like much, does it? I had taken out these bolts and put them back in again several times in our shared lifetime and thought nothing of it, but what it seems to be and what it is are sometimes such very different things. I had taken them out before knowing what I was doing, and was unhooking the sides from each other when I got this sudden feeling - I would never do this again. Not with this cot, not with my children, not again in this lifetime. Never is such an abrupt and grounding thought, that speaks to us of our mortality and the fragility of our lives. Never is something that we hear more of the older we get, and this was really one of the first, and one of the biggest for me.

We had always thought that this Mango Tree of ours had become full crop, it seemed like such a definite thing shortly after our third came to fruit, we were certain of it, but until now there had been nothing solidifying that idea. There was nothing that said, 'This is absolutely the path you are going to take from here on in.' Placing the five sides of our children's keeper up against the wall, looking like the broken body of a dear friend, I came to this understanding very suddenly.

This was the cot we had bought when Little Mango 1 was coming along and we were so young and probably not ready. It was the one we watched him sleep his first weeks in, that stayed in the bedroom beside us, that he gnawed the sides of when he was teething, the we first taught him to sleep through; it was the cot I spent weeks sanding back and staining when Little Miss Mango was almost here, I think it was how I prepared and knew when the time was right, and we watched her sleep, and then cry for nights on end in as we were desperately teaching her to sleep through, that she was sick in, that we read to her in, that she gave up so easily as her younger brother was approaching. Now we've seen him sleep in it, cry in it, laugh and speak to himself in, jump up and down, drink his bottle and go to sleep in, that we've seen him grow older and in doing so, move constantly closer to the time we would have to give it up.

I couldn't understand why I was to grumpy as I was earlier hunting down an Alan key, why I snapped at my wife as she came in to help, whom I later told to go away as it all went to pieces in separate parts of the room. When I did understand, it became overwhelming, ridiculous and irrational as it may have been to have such feelings for an object of wood and metal. Stupid. Incomprehensible. But it was there, undeniably there, choking my throat and clutching at my heart, so that I couldn't stay in the same room as it; couldn't put my eyes directly on it again as it was moved out to the dining room; and had to quickly transfer it to it's new owner's car and shut the door so I didn't see it again. It was the bitter-sweet taste of goodbye that had hit me hard, and stuck around the rest of the night.

And it's not that I was unhappy about it's new life - far from it, I'm glad it's story is to continue in a similar Mango Tree elsewhere. It was because it meant something, contained deep within it's careful structure; within the grain of the wood and the brush strokes of the varnish was our memories. Giving it up meant..... well I can't really explain it. We're not giving up memories, I suppose we'll always have those somewhere deep inside, we're not giving up our children because they will always be ours regardless of furniture; we're just giving up something that centred our lives for a while, something that shared a time with us, regardless of whether it knew it or not, and with it we are welcoming 'never' in it's stead.

The next time we see it will contain the memories of a new family, precious memories at that and undoubtedly different to our own, and it won't be our cot any more. It will have all it's familiarities but lose it's intimacy with us, like a close friend you lose touch with over the years only to find them very different people when you meet again. And although containing the histories of some very important figures in our live, of which it will continue to do, it will mean letting go, in a forever expansive battle to let go.

It is a melancholy thought, a grounding one; though wistful in it's nature and noble in it's intentions.